LUTHER BURBANK 



winter-bearing plant in California. And inas- 

 much as there are no sharp lines of demarcation 

 as to just when the pieplant begins and ends 

 bearing, the two seasons tended to merge, with the 

 practical result that some of these plants became 

 all-the-year bearers. 



The Power of Habit 



Possibly the use of the words habit and instinct 

 as applied to a plant requires a few words of 

 elucidation. 



We ordinarily take the habits of a given plant 

 so much as a matter of course that we are prone, 

 perhaps, to overlook their close correspondence 

 with the habits of birds and animals and other 

 animate creatures. Yet a moment's considera- 

 tion will make it clear that we may with full 

 propriety speak of the fixed or regular "habits" of 

 plants, and that there is no logical reason why we 

 should not speak of them as being determined 

 by "instinct," which after all suggests only the 

 spontaneous response to environing conditions, 

 present or reflected through heredity. 



And the force of the various instincts or habits, 

 in the case of the plant, as in the case of birds and 

 animals, is overwhelmingly powerful and quite 

 beyond the possibility of change in any given 

 generation. 



To cite a single illustration from the case in 



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